When Red met Caitlin Moran

'The death of David Bowie just reminded me to have fucking, mad impossible dreams.'

I was wearing a denim skirt, yellow fishnets and high-top green converse. Apparently he felt I would embarrass him at his sister’s birthday party, where everyone else would be wearing flowery dresses and clouds of Elnett Satin hairspray.

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Regrettably, I changed. And as I stood looking at myself in the mirror, in white jeans and a non-descript Gap jumper, I felt as if something had been taken from me, even if I couldn’t quite work out what it was.

At first, his words made me want to take up less space and collapse my bones like a foldaway tent; then they made me mad as hell.

It wasn’t until eight years later, when I read How to be a Woman, that I realised that was the moment I became a feminist.

Caitlin Moran’s words woke up something inside of me. She armed me with terms like ‘sexism’ and ‘the patriarchy’, which made sense of the indescribable sick feeling in my stomach that day.

For me and so many other young women, the book became a feminist manifesto that gave us the courage not only to call out sexism, but to laugh in its face while we did.

At the time, it said everything we felt but could somehow not articulate.

Five years on, Caitlin is still using her words to stir readers into action, only this time she’s encouraging all of us to question our political system - and those who control it – in her new book, Moranifesto. (Do read our literary editor Sarra Manning's brilliant review.)

So as Caitlin releases her political manifesto (which unsurprisingly includes plenty of wanking and Benedict Cumberbatch references), I took the chance to ask the woman who lit my feminist flame about friendship, Jeremy Corbyn and her writing process…

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N: You once said there was a time when you felt like you didn’t have the authority to write about certain things, like politics. What changed?

C: The thing is, I could have waited 20 years to write Moranifesto.

I could've done an enormous amount of research until I knew everything about economic policy and the history of every party. I could’ve worried that people were going to point out its flaws, or say I’m hopelessly naïve.

In a way, suggesting solid things is a more vulnerable thing to do as a writer, because you can get it wrong. But if I’ve got it wrong, let’s talk about why. That’s the start of a conversation.

Ultimately if everybody’s too scared to speak until they are perfect, then the only people who have the confidence to do so are the same people who have always been in power.

N: Sometimes I feel like I’m in two minds about whether we need to stay angry, or whether a political argument is more effective if we set aside rage. Where do you stand on anger?

C: This is a huge thing that I’ve spent years thinking about, because I have a lot of outrage at how we are still dealing with the same shit that we have done for hundreds of years.

But I’ve also noticed that if you become angry people never really listen to what you say, because they are surfing off your emotion. Anger is always fear bought to the boil - when someone is angry it’s because they are scared - and if people communicate in anger the conversation becomes an argument. Before long no one is listening to what anyone is saying.

So a good 30% of the effort I put into things is making sure that I don’t write in anger, because if your first paragraph is angry then you’re going to lose some of your readers.

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N: Do you ever get intimidated by a blank page?

C: No, I’ve only had writer’s block once in my life for 20 minutes.

In my twenties I struggled a bit with the idea of what to write about, because I was basically trying to write about the same things as the male columnists.

Then I kind of fell through this magical door when I was 27 and had two kids, and I began to look at the things people weren’t writing about. I realised that list is endless and I’m still adding 20 or 30 things to it every week.

Caitlin's new book, Moranifesto, is released this week

N: Do your columns come to you easily, or do you rewrite them?

C: Because I put ideas on sticky notes I always know what I'm going to write my Times column about two to three weeks in advance.

I don’t start writing until I’ve got it all in my head, so sometimes ideas sit on post-it notes for six months, waiting.

Basically each column has three bits: you need an eye-catching intro, a different angle to everyone else, and then a good ending. Once I’ve got those three things the columns usually take around 40 minutes to an hour.

N: So actually the hard work is in your head beforehand?

C: Yes, that is something that took me a long time to learn: if you are thinking and writing at the same time, that’s what will kill you. When I was writing my second novel I had the entire thing on an A4 piece of paper … so I was literally composing the book as I was writing it, and I’ll never do that again.

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N: What idea is percolating in your head at the moment?

C: The next idea I’m working on is about girl from nowhere, with nothing, who goes on to form a new political party. I want there to be novels about how working class girls can do that because there are only so many people who are going to read non-fiction polemic, so usually how you really change things is through characters, with stories.

I’m so excited about my next project, which is so HUGE it’s probably going to take 20 years to write. I’ve basically tried to set myself the biggest writing challenge, ever.

N: Is it like a political Lord of the Rings, with your own feminist version of Elvish?

C: It’s kind of even bigger than that. People will just lie on the floor crying and laughing when I tell them what I’m going to do. But it’s just like, fuck it, why not?

The death of David Bowie just reminded me to have fucking, mad impossible dreams.

Natasha Lunn with Caitlin at the Red Women of the Year Awards

N: I’m interested in the fact that while you give the impression of sharing your public life with us, after reading lots of interviews I still feel like you’re incredibly private, that there’s so much you’re holding back. Would you say that's true?

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C: Ah, you cunning woman, you’ve got me. That’s absolutely true. There’s a saying I’ve got on a post-it note somewhere: if you seek to conceal, seem ostensibly overshare-y. I remember reading that early on and thinking, that’s useful.

I suppose I don’t like… urrrgggh… I only want to share things from my life that are useful or funny, because otherwise I'm just wanking on, really.

I think there are two kinds of writing: one where people are pleasing themselves and just having a wank, and the other where they're trying to get everyone else off instead.

If I’m just sitting here, oversharing, that’s of no use to anyone, unless it’s a tiny little vignette that throws light on an idea or something that might be a universal experience.

It’s got to be a swap: If I’m going to make people read my views on politics or feminism, I will give them a funny anecdote about my life in return. Then I’ve kind of paid them with my humiliation, which seems like a fair exchange.

N: Do you make an effort to shield your kids from the limelight?

C: Oh god, absolutely. I think there’s nothing more awful than exposing a child to any kind of publicity or fame. When you’re growing up you’re like a carrot in the earth - if people keep pulling you up and looking at you as you’re growing then you’re just going to grow into a very weird carrot.

And also, from a writer’s point of view, that’s their material, their copy. They’ve got to choose what they want to do with it. I think I’ve told about three anecdotes about my children in the last ten years and to be honest two of them were made up. (Laughs)

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N: And are there things about your own life you’ve held back?

C: There’s loads of stuff that happens in my personal life that makes me think, it’s so unfair that I can’t write about this, even though it is heartbreaking and incredibly traumatic, I know I could write the fuck out of it. But that’s why fiction exists – you can go and put those things in books and no one gets hurt.

N: When I read the piece about your sex life I wondered if your kids were cringing…

C: Well my children don’t read my stuff at all, they just refer to my books as ‘mum’s dirty books’ and role their eyes. In one respect it’s quite annoying, because I really did write How to Be a Woman because I didn’t want my daughters to go though the same shit I did.

N: Have they REALLY not read it?

C: God, no. Every so often I put it on their beds in a ‘you might want to have a flick through this..’ kind of way. Actually, there was one time I asked them about their feminism club at school and my youngest one went, ‘Yeah we’ve got feminism club, but you wouldn’t really understand that mum.’ And I was like, ‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND FEMINSIM?!?!?! ‘

N: Gloria Steinem recently said that her female friendships were the foundation for her activism. Do you feel the same? And what have you learnt about maintaining female friendships amidst your career success?

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C: It’s weird but because I didn’t go to school and I had 5 sisters, and I've always worked from home, until very recently I didn’t really have female friends.

If I wasn’t at home, whenever I went out to work it was in a male-orientated environment, so if I wanted to see some women I would just see my sisters. There were all these women who I should’ve met at parties or in offices, but a quirk of fate meant we just kept missing each other, Sliding Doors style. And then there they all were on Twitter, all day, and I could sit in my dressing gown and piss about with them for 20 minutes every morning.

Women like India knight, Sali Hughes, Sophie Heawood and Lauren Laverne – we meet up every month or so like a cackling witches coven. It’s brilliant to talk to them because they’re all the big earners in their families, but they are mothers as well. We gossip, support each other and have come up with about ten different business ideas.

I’ve finally found out what it’s like to have female friends – and it’s bloody brilliant.

N: Friends aside, which writers do you adore?

C: I love Donna Tartt and Lorrie Moore, who is a wizard. How the fuck she manages to make so much happen in a sentence I will never know. And then Robert Macfarlane is someone who just finds the best words in the world. I love beautiful writers like that, but also useful writers, like Paul Mason and Gillian Tett.

N: What would people be surprised to discover you’re into?

C: I’m an obsessive gardener. I’m one of those annoying people who looks out of the window with a cup of coffee going, doesn’t the garden look magnificent this morning?! Kids, kids, look, those crocuses are on the edge of bloom! Look at the hope encapsulated in that beautiful stamen! And they’re like, 'please, shut up, you’re so embarrassing'.

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N: What do you think of Jeremy Corbyn?

C: It’s a tricky one. I voted for him and I spent a couple of months regretting it because I watched it tear the Labour party apart. But I think it’s part of a process that has to play out in order for us to get new parties.

People feel disconnected so they are looking for politicians who are anti-politics - Corbyn speaks about belief systems, not policies; Trump is completely anti-politics too, he won’t even talk about it.

We need to make talking about policy fun, which is why I've overshared about cystitis and Benedict Cumberbatch in order for us to talk about first past the post!

N: Do you think Hillary will become US president?

C: I suspect she’ll win. And thank God, if Trump is the alternative. The thing I find sad about Hillary is that so many people are going, 'she’s not a perfect feminist'. It’s like, oh my god, do you not read history books? Noone comes along as a shiny exemplar 20 years ahead of everybody else – it’s all incremental.

So what if she’s not perfect? Think about what her presidency could mean for the next generation. I mean, something like Hillary happens and you’re like, shit, that really does change the way I think about myself and my life. Because if at that age Hillary gets to be the most powerful person in the world, the whole myth of the slow, sad decline of a woman is overturned. Suddenly she’s there, forming economic policy. Go Hillary!

N: And finally, what scares you?

C: Mental illness, there not being enough hot water, and very poor WIFI signal. Those three things… that’s the end of the world right there.

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